Posts by Vic

> Wearing a loud shirt, in a built up area, during the hours of darkness

"Looking at me in a funny way"

Vic.

Re: Anyone tried aaisp.net?

I'm with them.

I only switched a couple of weeks ago, but so far, so good...

Their tech support has been perfect - I had a few questions to ask them before I signed up, and they took everything in their stride.

Vic.

Re: No, Trevor...

> Dyson Abbey?

"All My Circuits".

Vic.

Re: Newsflash@ Vic

> What about swapping engines with XL426 that is claimed to be taxiable?

Not enough, I'm afraid.

The engines need to be young enough to have an airworthy life ahead of them *and* they need proper provenance so that that can be assured. Rolls Royce need to sign off on that - and they are (quite understandably) being very conservative about the whole thing.

The 2014 and 2015 display seasons have been adjusted so that the throttles aren't moved during the display - this leads to reduced aging of the engines at the cost of increased fatigue in the airframe. This appears to be the best way to keep the aircraft flying for as long as possible.

The alternative is to find some suitable Olympus 202s, or remanufacture the ones currently in use. And as many of the original drawings and engineering documents for that engine have gone astray, that's not going to be a cheap option :-(

Vic.

Re: My opinion

I've been with my ISP since they first came into exsistance in 1995, Eclipse internet.

I've just left them after they decided to restrict my DNS server.

Useless bunch of crooks. Their "support" is quite the opposite.

Since moving to Andres and Arnold, all the mysterious disconnections I used to get have simply gone away, without me changing any hardware. It turns out that it was a forced disconnect, just tlike the LLP traces I sent to Eclipse said it was...

I am so happy to have migrated, I really am.

Vic.

Re: Doom for US tech companies

the only way Microsoft can win trust from non USA customers

The only way Microsoft can win trust from non-USA customers is to separate out their cloud business into a new company that is not a subsidiary.

I don't see them doing that...

Vic.

Re: So now it's official

The only way to solve this problem is to cut their budget; when the gravy train stops, all those smart boys may go out and do something productive

They'll just get someone like Ollie North in to "find" some extra budget...

Vic.

Re: Wow.

Oh, wait... Since this spec wasn't written by the PHP developers themselves, what relevance (if any) would it really have?

Upvoted, because however much I'd love for you to be wrong, ...

Vic.

Re: Is watching Twitter taking your eye off the ball ?

I know the average terrorist, or criminal is - almost by definition - not the sharpest tool in the box

If that were true, then why haven't we caught them all?

Vic.

Re: One app for all?

Some applications simply are not suitable all classes of device, even if the underlying API and tools let you write one app for all

I've written apps for multiple platforms in the past. My tool of preference is Glade.

This separates the application from the UI, meaning that re-skinning an app for a different platform or different role is simply a matter of re-drawing the UI in the RAD tool. As the UI is defined as XML, you can even hand-edit it for simple changes.

Qt does something similar, although my experience so far suggests that the "load the UI directly from XML" feature is less well-used than it is for Glade :-(

Vic.

Re: ICANN is only consultative

it strikes me that the big likelihood is that everyone would just accept the change and move on

I really, really doubt that.

Now I've no real interest in the .ir domain - AFAIK, I've never even performed a DNS lookup against it before today, saving perhaps for rDNS lookmups during spam attacks against my server.

But I'm buggered if I'm going to let some tin-pot US judge decide to put a black hole into my access to the Internet. He doesn't have the authority to restict my lookups into a third country.

So if this were to happen, .ir would suddenly get an entry in my nameserver - a couple of NS records pointing to ns.irnic.ir (193.189.122.83) and a.nic.ir (193.189.123.2).

And then any posturinf in the US wouuld have zero effect whatsoever.

Am I alone in thinking like this? I really doubt it.

Vic.

Re: Most insane argument on ElReg in a loooong time...

I don't say the government should store it because it can

You did. From the start of your article :-

Australia's federal government should store metadata collected by the nation's Internet service providers (ISPs), because the government already operates suitable facilities in which to do so.

And that makes as much sense as "Australia's federal government should machine-gun everyone over the age of 50 because they already have the facilities to do so"...

Vic.

Re: The problem with IPTV is...

...that there don't appear to be any simple and published standards

Yeah, there are. They're laid down in the various parts of ISO 13818.

Sure there actually are standards in use to get the multicast streams from your ISP, however you'll never know what they use and if there's DRM in there.

They're transport streams. The enclosing format is very well-specified.

If there is DRM of any flavour in there, that is something you're not going to get any info about - but as a user, you don't need it; you just supply the appropriate parts of the data feed to the correct CAM, and out pops unencrypted video.

Something DRM-free which I can ask for in a store like DVB-T or DVB-S.

Neither DVB-T not DVB-S are DRM-free. And nor is IPTV. That's the way of it, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

This is the base for interoperability

It isn't. There is already interoperability - but that is entirely orthogonal to the presence of DRM.

Vic.

Re: have I got this right?

if someone has a big gaping hole in the timeline on their CV, we absolutely must not ask about it. The reason for this is that it could be prison time.

That's interesting - I was advised not to have any gaping holes on my CV, because an interviewer would assume it was something like prison time, and that would be the end of that.

I filled in the hole in my CV - which wasn't prison time, it was arse-around-spending-redundancy-money time - and things improved immediately.

Of course, that didn't stop the inquisition I got from one interviewer who insisted on asking me *many* times about the time between University and the first entry on my CV. The answer was the the same each time - the agent hadn't sent him the back page on my CV. Oh how I wish I'd remembered the advice I'd been given always to carry a clean copy of the CV to interviews...

Vic.

The individual user's login credentials aren't used to access the database, instead the system loads shared credentials from a secret location

So the keys to the database are under the mat?

That's the very worst sort of "security by obsdcurity". If what you say is true, the application needs to be withdrawn immediately, as it is entirely unsafe.

Vic.

Re: NSAIDS

As a gout sufferer I know that large doses of these drugs are spectacularly successful on the right sort of problem.

I've had 2 gout attacks now.

Hydration is everything. I was dehydrated on both occasions, and rehydration sorted the problem out in double-quick time.

Ibruprofen worked in the short term, though :-)

Vic

Re: Whenever you hear Oracle whine about Android

No.

Yes.

Source only has to be produced when requested by the user.

Source has to be produced when requested by *** ANY THIRD PARTY ***.

Don't take my word for it - go read the licence You're looking for section 3(b).

If you aren't a user, then Redhat doesn't have any obligations to you and never did.

Absolutely, fundamentally. 100% incorrect. Read the licence. It disagrees entirely with what you say.

This is how a company that creates GPL based derivative works for internal use doesn't have to give YOU a copy of what they have done

Wholly internal use does not constitute redistribution. But if they do redistribute, they must do so under one of the clauses of section 3. Pick one - the effect is much the same...

If you aren't a user, then Redhat doesn't have any obligations to you and never did.

Totally incorrect.

From GPLv2 section 3:

You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also ... Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange

Do you see the phrase "any third party" ? It's important. It means exactly what it says - *any* third party. It does not matter whether or not you are a RH client - *any* third party is entitled to a copy of the source code of anything redistributed under 3(b). And IME, everything RH reditributes is under 3(b).

Rights to the source are only conferred upon the user of the program. If you aren't a user, then you're irrelevant.

Seriously - read the licence. It disagrees with you.

Vic.

Re: Splorf

And I'm not sure about the genitive case; "full of" has the feel of an English idiom, but I can't think of a more appropriate case.

That's what the ablative case is for...

Vic.

Re: Another contributing factor?

The explosive growth in real hardware performance over the last three decades has let us det away with abandoning fundamental principles of computer programming. Like tight, efficient code is better than bloatware.

The problem is widespread.

I was working at a place a while back where we were developing a wide-ranging Python application[1].

I saw one developer commit a piece of code that spawned a Java VM within the Python code. Why? The developer wanted to use a Java Hashmap.

Now I know that the Hashmap goes somewhat further that the Python Dictionary, particularly in things like type safety. But none of that was being used - it was just a key/value store. The Dictionary collection would have done the job perfectly, if only the guy in question had learnt enough of the language he was supposed to be using to have learnt it. Instead, he just used the tools he knew at the cost of *massive* run-time bloat.

Was he taken aside and shown the error of his ways? No, Management congratulated him on the substantial amount of code he had committed, and put pressure on the rest of us to hurry up and get it working...

Vic.

[1] Python was chosen by the then-head of Software Development, so it wasn't something I could argue with...

Re: Sometimes...

> in a C-130 people are treated as cargo

In transport aircraft, they're referred to as "SLC" - "Self-Loading Cargo".

Vic.

Re: Cos, y'know, it's bad for business.

> Think of how much it would cost if it was good for business

Actually, according to the Swiss Government, it already is good for business...

Vic.

After all talking hands-free should logically be not much different than carrying on a conversation with a passenger

It is.

Compressed audio necessarily involves a delay. If this is <50ms, you won't notice.

But when the delay is ~150ms, the conversation is significantly distracting.

Next time you make a GSM call, think about the delay you're experiencing. It's not 50ms...

Vic.

Re: ok, listen up, I'll say this one time only.

Web Architecture means Unicodes are the only thing which have "No right to be forgotten".

Amanfrommars does it so much better...

Vic.

Re: @ A K Stiles

I'd like a system with 2 passwords where the alpha password lets you in normally, but the beta password 'obliterates' the incriminating stuff whilst allowing access to the innocent but private stuff...

That's called a "duress password". It's used in many situations.

It's entirely precluded by people insisting on biometrics as authentication...

Vic.